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Olympus is rolling out its new PEN E-PM1 camera by asking random consumers to demonstrate how easy the latest PEN Ready camera is to use.

The PEN Ready Project looks to give more than 1,000 free PEN Ready E-PM1 cams to random people around North America. Those fortunate folks in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Miami, and Lehigh Valley, Penn., (Olympus' hometown) can go anywhere they like and take any pictures or HD videos they like (Olympus is asking them to shoot at least 20 still images or vids; those who do will be entered in a sweepstakes).

Olympus is collecting those works of would-be art for showcasing on a new custom-designed Tumblr blog. The company's hope is that people around the world will visit the PEN Ready site to see what the E-PM1 can do, thus wanting one for themselves. … Read more

Wunderlist is a beautifully designed, multiplatform task management tool that can sync with the cloud and even add tasks via e-mail.

The beauty of Wunderlist lies in its simplicity. Its interface is made up mostly of Tasks and Lists. Lists are essentially groups of tasks, great for organizing projects or categories of to-dos.

To get started, tap the Lists tab on the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, then create a new List. From there, you can tap the List and add new Tasks to it. You can prioritize Tasks with a star, create due dates, and add … Read more

President Obama joined thousands today in marking the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center site in New York, laying his hands on a bronze memorial engraved with names of victims--a list arranged with the help of an algorithm.

The 2,983 names on 76 bronze panels surround two cascading pools of water where the towers stood, in architect Michael Arad's design "Reflecting Absence." In seemingly random fashion, the panels list those who died on September 11, 2001, as well as in the WTC bombing of February 26, 1993.

But the carefully thought-out memorial reflects the victims' complex web of relationships to one another--professional, social, and accidental. This was accomplished thanks to an algorithm created by data artist Jer Thorp working with New York design firm Local Projects.

Arad rejected arranging the names alphabetically or chronologically. The best way to set the names seemed to be one that wouldn't favor some people over others, so they're arranged according to groups and their relationships with one another. … Read more

The "Taiwan Economic Times" is reporting that Apple's iPad 2 assembler, Hon Hai Precision Industry, has upped its initial shipment projection of 14 million iPad 2 units for the third quarter to 20 million units.

If the report is accurate, that's a 42.8 percent increase in projected output. "Although declining to comment on the report, Hon Hai stressed that it is normal to forecast a shipment surge in the third quarter, a booming season for the electronic industry."

Obviously Apple is confident in high sales heading into the holiday season. The projected numbers … Read more

General Electric is making a foray into green buildings by investing in Project Frog, which uses various technologies to speed up new building design and construction.

GE Energy Financial Services will be one of four companies to invest $22 million in Project Frog, GE said today. The other three are venture capital companies: Claremont Creek Ventures, Greener Capital Partners, and RockPort Capital Partners.

The money will be used to expand Project Frog's sales, and GE will install one of the company's prefabricated buildings at the GE Learning Center in Ossining, N.Y.

Project Frog uses software and construction … Read more

Foursquare and similar location-based check-in apps might sound silly to some, but they're gaining in popularity nonetheless.

A new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that at least 28 percent of U.S. adults have found a liking for mobile and social location-based services.

Kathryn Zickuhr, a Pew Internet Project research specialist and co-author of the report, explained in a statement:

Americans are not currently all that eager to share explicitly their location on social media sites, but they are taking advantage of their phones' geolocation capabilities in other ways. Smartphone owners are using … Read more

On today's show, an earthquake appears to be headed right for us, and all we can talk about is HP and WebOS some more! Plus, Lenovo's baffling decision to drop the ThinkPad Tablet into the marketplace at $500, when fire-sale frenzy is at its peak. Um. Oops. And would Apple risk fragmenting the iPhone in order to get into emerging markets? We'll see. Oh, and quick hicks!

Who decided solar panels should be flat?

A seventh-grader from New York has worked out that solar panels arranged more like tree branches may capture more light than flat panels.

For real, kind of. Aidan Dwyer, 13, noticed that tree branch patterns are Fibonacci numbers, postulated that it had to do with photosynthesis, took some pretty involved measurements of an oak tree, built a PVC-pipe solar array in the same shape, built a flat solar panel, compared how much light each captured over time, and voila, he had an award-winning science experiment and a great-sounding theory: trees evolved with these patterns for good reason. He found that tree-shaped pattern is as much as 50 percent more efficient than the flat panel, depending on the time of year.

The seventh-grader's explanation was that the Fibonacci pattern keeps branches out of each others' shadows in full light and at the same time allows the tree to garner as much light as possible when some branches are in shadow and others in light.… Read more

To achieve a miniature, tilt-shift effect on subjects, one can typically rely on specialized lenses or miniature-styled programmed modes found in today's cameras. A Norwegian design studio called Skrekkogle has done the opposite with its Big Money Project.

Instead of "shrinking" a subject with special effects, they have created a massive 20:1 euro cent coin to make a subject appear small, like a miniature scale model, in comparison.

Skrekkogle's giant coin was available for sale at its Web site, but is, alas, currently out of stock. More pics below. … Read more